Ronnie Burkett’s Paper Mache Recipes and other things

Having seen Ronnie Burkett‘s amazing Tinka’s New Dress in its last season at the Melbourne Festival in 2002, and heard him speak so inspiringly at the Puppetry Summit there at the same time, I was interested to see Burkett’s article on paper mache (via Puppetry News and Views).

The article talks about recipes for making one’s own paper mache pulp, and the various situations they are useful for, but Burkett also says that much of the time he now uses a commercial papier mache pulp called Celluclay. I thought it would be ideal for a court jester’s marrotte that I was making, but its hard to come by here, so I tried Mix-It, which is made in Victoria. When I tried an instant paper pulp before many years ago, it was quite lumpy, but this mix turned out to be nice and smooth to work, and dried really hard and white.

The head was sculpted over a wood and polystyrene base, so that the layer of paper mache is relatively thin, which has the advantage of taking less time to dry, and being economical. It’s also non-toxic and takes paint and finishes of all kinds.I did like reading that Burkett also suffers from impatience waiting for casts to be ready and things to dry.